April 18th, 2015

Now being in the radio/broadcast field, this headline immediately caught my eye.

Basically, this post is talking about how there is only so much airwaves available, and how they need to be weeded out in order to make room for wireless carriers. The way they will do this, according to The New York Times, is that the government will bid on certain airwaves, and then sell those airwaves and forward them to wireless phone carriers.

This, to me, is crazy. I mean, I guess you don’t really think of the air as being a limited amount of space?? It makes sense when you look at it from a science perspective, but in general, it’s not something you think about. Air is supposed to be unlimited, but in reality, it really isn’t. I wonder why it took so long for this to finally happen; that is, for the air space to become literally so full that the government has to buy airwaves to sell. This also says something about our generation, and how important it is for cell phone carriers to own and use these airwaves.

The article goes on to explain two other topics related, but I thought this airwaves thing was the most important thing to think about.

What do you guys think?? Is this as weird of a concept to you as it is to me, or am I just ignorant?

This kind of blows my mind as well. It makes sense as to why this is happening because of the amount of cell phone usage, but it’s sad that now these airwaves that were once just used by radio, are being taken over. Do you think this is the start of other sources of technology taking over radio permanently?

The issue is how do they get spectrum back from broadcasters. They want the spectrum for these new services, but broadcasters are using some of it. It will be interesting to see how the FCC manages this.